Justice Department officials announced Friday that they would not seek criminal charges in a long-running inquiry into whether the IRS and former official Lois Lerner targeted conservative groups, including the Tea Party, for increased scrutiny in applications for tax-exempt status.
“Our investigation uncovered substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints,” Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik said Friday in a notification letter to Congress.
“But poor management is not a crime. We found no evidence that that any IRS official acted based on political discriminatory, corrupt or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution.”